Over a decade and across thousands of miles, Scott Baxter photographed 100 families that have been tending land in Arizona for a century or more. What began as a personal project and historical quest evolved into a book and exhibit, titled 100 Years, 100 Ranchers, that celebrates Arizona’s centennial and ranching tradition.

A self-taught, 25-year veteran photographer, Baxter works best in the medium’s emotional realm. Starting in 2001, he spent the first years of his project building relationships with his subjects, so that when he returned with his bevy of classic film cameras—a Linhof Technikardan 4×5, Calumet 8×10, Pentax 6×7, Hasselblad 500CM, and 1957 twin-lens Rolleiflex—he could make images that captured the essence of the profession as much as the individual.

“I was thinking about stories or relationships,” Baxter says. “It became very personal. I was trying to pull a photograph that represented who I thought that person was.”

Baxter looked for stories in every photo, whether it was a composed, worth-a-thousand-words portrait of Ken Chilton just after his 95th birthday or a fortuitous moment on the job, like Norman Brown standing on his cattle scale. Reflecting the hardworking, eternally compassionate demeanor of his subjects, none of the images were cropped or retouched.

The epigraph to 100 Years, 100 Ranchers is a quote from rancher Jesse Hooker Davis: “This is bigger than me. It isn’t about me. It’s just my turn to take care of it.” For Baxter, the grand tradition of ranching in Arizona—one firmly rooted in family and legacy—became apparent as he was welcomed into his subjects homes and even had his daughter help on the project.

“I kinda joke that I got a whole new Christmas card list out of the deal. But I wanted to do something that was worthwhile,” Baxter says. “So for me it was more about having something that my kids can look at and say, ‘Hey my dad did that.’ If I was able to leave something that was positive photographically, then I accomplished my goal.”

Scott Baxter is based in Scottsdale, AZ. See more at www.scottbaxterphotography.com.

Connie Brown

Casey Murph

Jim Pyeatt

Jim Riggs

Jimmy Baird

Lamar Willis

Photographer Scott Baxter

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In 2005, Mitch Dobrowner picked up a camera again after a long layoff. In that time, Mother Nature has not been shy when dishing out intense weather and Mitch has made it his business to capture it. You can see more of his impressive work here.

How’d you get started?

As a teenager in the early 1970s, I was mainly about fast cars, motorcycles, women, and getting in trouble. Hoping to get me on a different path, my father gave me an old Argus rangefinder camera. It worked. I ended up with a scholarship to Pratt Institute, which I passed on because I didn’t want to drive from Long Island to Brooklyn every day. My parents said, “Do something,” so I went to Manhattan and started assisting.

At one point I was working for Hashi; Canon was one of his clients. I showed someone from the company my personal work and they gave me some funding. I used that to get the heck out of New York. I had been exposed to a lot of Ansel Adams, and, having grown up in New York, those landscapes just blew my mind. They looked like another planet to me, and I had to go see them.

I experimented with shooting tungsten film in daylight, using infrared, taking Ektachrome and developing it in C41, reversing things and using different types of filters—it was all so much fun. I was taking red, green, and blue filters and using triple-exposures and coming out with things that looked like they were exposed correctly but were multiple exposures on a single frame. That taught me about learning the fundamentals but doing my own thing.

Then I met my wife and I dropped photography for 20 years. We had our own design company, doing images for the TV networks.

What led you to storms?

I was shooting landscapes and always found myself in the worst weather because the light was the most interesting. [Storm chaser] Sean Casey lived behind me; he recommended someone I could go out with. I had this vision in my mind of what I wanted to shoot; Casey’s friend recommended I go to South Dakota.

How has your technique evolved over the years?

Shooting storms is kind of a hybrid of shooting a quiet landscape and a sports event: Compositions are constantly changing, the light’s changing, there’s wind, there’s noise, there’s a lot going on and you have to stay focused. I used a Sony Cyber-shot DSC-R1 when I started in 2009, which wasn’t the optimal camera for storms. It was really limited to landscapes, but I did get some of my best shots that first year, and it was great for lightning strikes.

The next year I upgraded to a Canon EOS 5D Mark II. I really like live view for shooting storms and landscapes. I come from a view-camera and wet-darkroom background, and composing in live view looked like ground glass to me. I don’t understand why people still use optical viewfinders for landscapes. Now I shoot with two lenses: a 24–105mm and a 70–200mm. You give up a bit of sharpness with a zoom but you can compose on the fly—you don’t have time to switch lenses or cameras because it all changes so fast.

Do you use filters?

Yup. I have two 5D Mark IIs—one that’s modified for full spectrum (the IR and anti-aliasing filters have been removed) and another that is not modified. I think, What’s the environment look like? What’s the light look like? Then I choose how to filter based on what I see. In a lower-contrast or overcast situation without a lot of directional light, I’ll use the body without the sensor filters. It gives me the opportunity to add screw-on filters to the lens. I can block parts of the spectrum based on the way the situation looks. I don’t like the camera manufacturer telling me how I should see or expose. I like the freedom to pick and choose the way I want to do things. I also use filters with digital the way I did when shooting black-and-white film. Red (25), green, and blue filters are still important components in my arsenal. If I want to darken a sky I’ll use a red filter or a polarizer.

Do you adjust on the fly?

When I drop my tripod, I’m usually set up at 50mm f/8 and half a second—and focused at infinity. Sometimes you drive 500 miles and drop your tripod and the perfect composition happens the second you drop it, sometimes a half an hour later. I don’t shoot much. In a 10-day trip I might fill up two 16GB cards, but I only shoot sequentially if I’m trying to capture a lightning strike.

I don’t use rules of composition. The main thing is just what looks good to me. A lot of my shots have a horizon in them, which helps ground the pictures, but I think everybody has to have their own vision. It’s OK to go and use the rules—Ansel Adams has obviously influenced me a lot-—but that’s a foundation to deviate from.

Why monochrome mode?

I shoot in RAW but in monochrome mode so I can see a preview of what I’m shooting. Unlike with a film camera, I don’t have to imagine what it will look like in black-and-white, I can actually see it. When I convert my RAW file, all I do is take saturation and turn it to 0 and it looks very, very close to what I originally shot. Part two is prints: My final product and vision is the print. I print on Epson Stylus Pro 9900 printers using Epson’s ABW driver. After all the experimenting I’ve found that the ABW driver gives me the most neutral black-and-white prints.

How do you prepare for a shoot?

When I hear music I see colors, and when I do photography most times I see the picture in my brain before I go out. I do a self-check and see where I’m at, what I’m looking to do, think of what I want to capture—what’s my goal? Like that tornado shot: Before I went on that trip I knew I wanted to capture an iconic tornado. The Wizard of Oz made a big impact on me when I was a kid, and I just always envisioned this iconic tornado shot-—and then it was there. All of a sudden I was standing in North Dakota and there’s this thing.

How do you deal with the weather itself?

I found that a cotton washcloth is the best way to keep rain off, and I’ve tried every kind of rain gear. I have long hair and I wear a beanie, which keeps the hair out of my eyes, and when it’s pouring rain I put the beanie over the camera to keep it dry.

Also that thing of truly focusing on my work, even though there might be a lot going on around me. That’s where storm tour leader (and photographer) Roger Hill, who I often go out with, comes in. I have to stay focused and enjoy the moment, not let it pass with pressure to get a great shot, but to really enjoy it. The only human thing I listen for is Roger saying, “We gotta get the hell out of here right now!”

How close are you to the storms?

Usually with a tornado, we’re somewhere around a mile, mile-and-a-half from it. Roger usually thinks of an escape route. We never get ourselves in a super dangerous position, though we have what he calls close encounters where we get right under something, like a rotating cloud. It’s pretty safe though. I don’t get scared because it’s so amazing what I’m looking at. We can be far, we can be close; every storm is a little bit different. I see these storms as living things—I’m taking a portrait of them.

stormcatcher3

stormcatcher1

stormcatcher5

stormcatcher4

stormcatcher2

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In the mid-1980s, when Marisa Scheinfeld was 6, her family moved to New York’s Catskills region, once known as the Borscht Belt. A preeminent vacation spot from the 1920s to the 1970s, especially for American Jews, the area boasted more than 600 hotels with mammoth swimming pools, delicious food, and top-notch entertainment. Although Scheinfeld’s family frequented resorts like Kutsher’s and the Concord, by the time they moved there, the Borscht Belt’s heyday was long over, and in the decades that followed, many of its hotels were abandoned or demolished.

She began her series Echoes of the Borscht Belt in 2010 as an artistic remedy for the homesickness she’d developed while working and earning an MFA in San Diego. Shooting Kodak Portra 120 on a Pentax 645 and using only natural light, Scheinfeld scours hotels for remnants of the Borscht Belt’s past, focusing on spaces reclaimed by nature (an indoor pool carpeted in moss) or repurposed by recent visitors (a showroom now used as a skate park). This combination elicits warm memories but also deep sadness from former visitors.

It wasn’t until a recent trip to Kutsher’s that Scheinfeld felt a nostalgic ache. “I had gone to this place where things had always been so simple,” she says. “Now it was literally the carcass of the hotel. All that’s left are the bones.”

She would like to return before it is razed and a new cluster of casinos and hotels arrive, courtesy of New York State’s recent gaming legislation. Scheinfeld hopes such development will revitalize the area and remind people of the gorgeous scenery that has lured city dwellers for centuries. She doesn’t expect the Borscht Belt’s second coming, but rather another unique rebirth for the Catskills, which has flourished and fallen with numerous industries since the 1700s.

“This project is very much a metaphor for the life cycle—everything has a birth, a death, and there’s all this space in between,” Scheinfeld says. “If you look beyond the decay, there’s a lot of beauty in the environment, and I think in that is potential. Even though it might be hard to see amidst rust and peeling paint, it’s still there.”

Marisa Scheinfeld’s book of this work will be published by Cornell University Press in 2015, and more of her work is available on her site.

Image from Marisa Scheinfeld’s “Echoes of the Borscht Belt”

Image from Marisa Scheinfeld’s “Echoes of the Borscht Belt”

Image from Marisa Scheinfeld’s “Echoes of the Borscht Belt”

Image from Marisa Scheinfeld’s “Echoes of the Borscht Belt”

Image from Marisa Scheinfeld’s “Echoes of the Borscht Belt”

Image from Marisa Scheinfeld’s “Echoes of the Borscht Belt”

Image from Marisa Scheinfeld’s “Echoes of the Borscht Belt”

Image from Marisa Scheinfeld’s “Echoes of the Borscht Belt”

The post My Project: Marisa Scheinfeld Photographs the Ruins of New York’s Borscht Belt appeared first on Popular Photography.

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Fabulous Food

Fabulous Food

Fabulous Food

Fabulous Food

Fabulous Food

**Your pictures are making me hungry. How do you do that with images? **

The recipe is number one. My job is to make my subjects look amazing, and it helps if I start with a great recipe and great looking food. But if the recipe isn’t working, then my lighting and props can come to the rescue. Props are especially important when I am shooting an unexceptional recipe—showing a table that looks like someone really set it, or including a bit of a dish makes the food look better. Good composition helps, too.

How do you plan 
your compositions?

If you want your photograph to be all about the food and the recipe, overhead angles work well. A table setting with a straight-on perspective focuses more on the mood, inviting 
people to sit down and eat. Certain angles are better for some foods. A three-quarter angle, for example, always works for lasagna because you see the layers and a little bit of the top…

**How do you prepare 
for a shoot? **

While the food stylist is cooking, I test the composition and lighting with props. Timing is very important: If the food looks cold, then it doesn’t look tasty, so food always comes at the 
last minute. Preparation takes 
a very long time but the shooting itself is really fast.

Who else do you work with?

On set we have a food stylist and a prop stylist who handles the dishes and background. We’re always working together. Before the shoot we have an idea, and we also discuss with the clients what they want. I imagine 
from my side how to present that, and on set I direct the 
overall process and work with the prop stylist on different 
possibilities and arrangements.

What gear do you use?

I shoot with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II and a 90mm f/2.8 Canon TS-E tilt-shift lens and also a zoom lens, a 24–105mm f/4L Canon EF IS. I like using natural light, but if the situation isn’t working—if there’s no window or the weather’s bad—then I use two Profoto Pro-8a 2400 power packs and sometimes two or three ProHead Plus light heads with sheer on the heads. I only use more than two light heads when shooting a big table setting with at least five dishes and a big background.

Before a shoot, I check the weather frequently and decide whether I’ll use daylight or strobes. But sometimes it depends on the job: If you have eight or ten dishes, artificial light is faster than using window light, which changes and can keep things from looking consistent.

How do you decide on your aperture?

It depends what the project is for. Cookbook pictures serve to bring attention to the food and the recipe, so when I’m shooting for a cookbook, a shallow depth of field allows me to home in on certain aspects of the dish and let most of the background go out of focus. For magazine photographs, it’s usually all about telling a story with props and styling too, so there I’ll use a deeper depth of field.

What’s your postproduction process like?

I use Phase One Capture One 6, and sometimes I’ll fix color a little bit, but I don’t really do anything crazy. I try to make it look very natural, but if it doesn’t look good the client, the magazine staff, or I have to retouch.

What changes when you’re shooting beverages?

Timing is important here too—ice melts in the glass, and with beer you have to get the great foam on top. I prepare more for beer than anything else. I test without it for composition and lighting to get ready, and then I shoot quickly.

I also control the reflection in the glass. When I use window light, I put sheer in front of the window to soften the reflection, and cover the other side with a foam core board so that the glass doesn’t reflect anything else on set. I also get down when I shoot—I don’t want to see myself in the glass.

Some of your photos 
have styling that looks slapdash. Do you like that?

Yes, I like food that looks natural. Food photography follows trends, and these days it’s all about organic and healthy. Ten or fifteen years ago the food was perfectly styled and lit—it looked a bit artificial. But now it’s more natural, even a little messy: a napkin that’s not perfectly folded, crumbs on the table, a beer with a little bit of overflow. Viewers like that kind of thing because it happens on their own tables too.

What differences are there between your editorial and commercial work?

Editorial people love friendly looking photos; shooting for magazines is more free, more creative—happy accidents are a good thing. But catalogs and advertising are totally different. I did Boar’s Head, the ham, and it’s just one shot with the sandwich all day. They make it different with more ham or different lighting, but it’s just one shot from like 9 a.m. to 
8 p.m. It’s all about the simple shot. No props, or minimal props.

What tips would you 
give for shooting food 
for the first time?

Photography is all about lighting. No matter what kind of subject, if you have good lighting, everything looks better. So try to find good light: I like high-contrast lighting, but some prefer flat, soft lighting. It’s a matter of personal taste, but you must learn how light works with your subject and how to control it to make the food look delicious. And think about the food before you shoot: the recipe, the color, and even the dishes. Find something charming about your subject, even if it’s just pasta.

What’s the most 
difficult food to shoot?

Lasagna! A food stylist once told me that making a good-looking lasagna is especially hard because there are many layers, which are not too charming or colorful, and the top is flat and unattractive. Plus, once you cut it, it gets messed up quickly.

**Styling 101 **

We asked Paul Grimes, a food stylist who works frequently with Kim on her shoots, to share some tips for making your grub look its best.

**Prepare: **Get the lighting and props ready before the food arrives on set. The idea is to capture the life of what you’re shooting; freshness will give you a right-out-of-the-oven look.

Think like an artist: Use your knowledge of color. If there are multiple items on a plate, consider how their colors and textures interact. Think of the plate as a blank canvas and the food as your paint.

Consider your plating: Though chefs may be trained to set the protein closest to the diner, you can bend that rule for aesthetic reasons. Plating can also depend on what you’re selling: If you’re making a picture for a chicken company, then make the chicken the star. Most of the time, though, simply think of the plate as an ensemble and try to make everything look good.

**Understand the food****: ** 
This takes practice and experience. Pasta, for instance, absorbs sauce, so you may need to add more as you shoot. Think about the relationship of the food to the set as well: If something is standing up, will it block the light source or create strange shadows?

**Stay flexible: **You’re trying to capture the lively aspect of a food, so even if ice cream melts, go with it—that’s what ice cream does.

Yunhee Kim came to New York City after graduating from the Rochester Institute of Technology and began her career as a photo assistant. Her love of cooking and eating cemented her commitment to food shooting.

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After giving birth, a lioness shelters her newborns in a den, raising them completely alone; the rest of the pride—including their father—doesn’t see them. Wildlife photographer Suzi Eszterhas had stumbled across such a mother and her two-week-old litter while shooting at the Masai Mara Reserve in Kenya, and knew instinctively that these young lions offered a golden opportunity.

She also knew she’d have to wait. For weeks, Eszterhas stayed at the den site, often not shooting a single image. Finally, when the cubs were between five and seven weeks old, and too rowdy for Mom to handle alone, the lioness trotted out her young to meet the rest of the pride—and their father, for the first time. The photo of that first encounter has become one of her best sellers, and she considers it one of her finest moments as a photographer.

Much of the photography of baby animals hinges on patience, whether waiting for just the right moment to shoot, working to gain the trust of an animal, or even waiting by the phone for a scout on another continent to ring with news.

“If you spend enough time around these animals, if you wait through the slow periods, you get these incredible action-packed moments,” says Eszterhas. “You get to witness stuff that’s very special and very rare.”

Student of Behavior
Eszterhas grew up watching birds in her backyard and taking notes on their behavior. Not only did it hone her eye (and patience), but it also instilled a belief that great wildlife photography comes only with a great understanding of animal behavior. Prior research is crucial, and Eszterhas will spend months, even years, talking to researchers and reading numerous studies on whatever animal she plans to photograph next.

That study then translates into intense observation in the field. “It helps to predict where you’re going to find them and where you might take a good photo,” Eszterhas says.

While working with orphaned three-toed sloths at the Aviarios Sloth Sanctuary in Costa Rica, Eszterhas followed a wild mother and her newborn into the forest. Small, well-camouflaged creatures that hang high in the trees, the sloths were a challenge, but knowing they typically feed on the same tree for three to five days, she learned the mother’s patterns, and could soon predict how long she would stay in a tree, and where she’d go next.

Understanding animal behavior can also keep you safe. Eszterhas notes, for example, that a lion will yawn when it’s happy and full, but a grizzly bear’s yawn means it’s stressed and could charge.

Observing and understanding behavior is also crucial to gaining the animal’s trust. Eszterhas stresses the importance of building a relationship with the animals, to prove you won’t harm them or their young: “Once you get their trust, if you ever violate it, it’s hard to get it back.”

This is a particular challenge with mothers who have just given birth. “Once they get a newborn, even the most habituated, most calm, most workable mother can turn very sensitive, somewhat schizophrenic, so you don’t know how to predict her behavior,” she says. “There’s a lot of maternal hormones that are pumping through them where it’s all about protecting and hiding their young.”

As the saying goes, you never want to get between a mama bear and her cubs, but Eszterhas has found ways—even when photographing brown bears (grizzlies). The time it takes to gain an animal’s trust, again, varies: While some gorillas will let you approach them just two days after giving birth, she spent weeks without shooting a single image while habituating a bat-eared fox couple.

The Right Gear
When it is time to shoot, Eszterhas uses a Canon EOS-1D X (having recently upgraded from an EOS-1D Mark III) and loves that it’s almost impossible to fill its buffer, considering that she sometimes snaps thousands of images a day, often in long bursts. Advances in sensor technology and processing have also allowed her to photograph monkeys in a thick jungle at ISO 6400 with relatively low image noise.

The lenses Eszterhas uses often vary from species to species. For big cats and bears, she almost always uses a 500mm tele, while for apes she uses primarily a 70–200mm zoom, sometimes a 300mm, and keeps a 1.4X teleconverter in her back pocket.

But on-the-fly adjustments are necessary depending on the size of the animal and proximity, to say nothing of working exclusively with daylight. Eszterhas admits there’s plenty of trial, error, and luck involved, whether her subject is the lioness choosing to introduce the cubs to the pride during the day instead of night, or the bat-eared fox family having their pups in a rather shallow den.

Locating animals with newborns is another challenge in itself. For about a year and a half, Eszterhas was on call for four female tigers to give birth. Finally, “I get a call from my contact in India, a real garbled, clearly overseas voicemail saying, ‘Rajberah’s nipples look good,’” she laughs. Observing a mother’s swollen or ringed nipples in the wild is one indication of a new litter, and the specific mating patterns of animals like ring-tailed lemurs also make work easy.

But Eszterhas is often at the whim of nature, even with the help of researchers and conservation groups advising her where animal families might be found. And some of the biggest obstacles in wildlife photography are due to human agency, whether from poachers, deforestation, or the social or political issues of a specific country. “You have to work with some local obstacles, but in the same respect you gain—you have to gain—an incredible appreciation of the cultures you’re working in,” she says. “If you don’t, you won’t be accepted, you won’t be respected, they’ll boot you out.”

Not All Warm & Fuzzy
What Eszterhas seems to love most about her photography is all the drama that comes with babies. Tracking cheetahs, she’s photographed riveting gazelle hunts and a mother instructing her cubs how to hunt; she’s also witnessed the tragedy of a cheetah losing all five of her cubs. “It’s really not just about the warm and fuzzy soft portraits, it’s about the whole stories, all these challenges that these animals face as they grow up.” she says. “And some of them aren’t warm and fuzzy at all.”

Most of the photos here appear in Eszterhas’ newly completed Eye on the Wild, a children’s book series whose six volumes each cover a species from birth to adulthood: Cheetah, Gorilla, Lion, Brown Bear, Sea Otter, and Orangutan. The photographer was adamant that they be aimed at children, believing that commitment to wildlife conservation and passion for photography must begin at a very young age.

Eszterhas does limit her photos for kids’ publications to the warm and fuzzy, so her more stark images, such as the hunting cheetahs on page 96, do not appear. “That would be way too much for the kids to handle,” she says.

Aspiring wildlife photographers note: Great images can often be found close to home. After traveling from Antarctica to the Arctic and everywhere in between, Eszterhas returned to her home in San Francisco to shoot an animal she grew up photographing: sea otters.

“Here’s this project that just kinda came around full circle, brought me right back to where I started,” says Eszterhas. “And I loved it, I loved every minute of it, working close to home. One of the things I think about traveling that’s ironic is, especially when you live in a place like Northern California, you realize actually how beautiful it is, and how amazing it is here, and how much wildlife we have on our doorstep.”

Suzi Eszterhas’ Eye on the Wild, published by Frances Lincoln Children’s Books, is available on amazon.com. See more of her work, and info on her tours and workshops, at _suzieszterhas.com._

Hand of Man

Southern Sea Otters

Bat-eared Fox and Pups

Mind Mama

African Lion and Cub

Multitask!

Brown-throated Three-toed Sloth And Newborn

Cheetahs with Fawn Prey

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What was the first weird sport you photographed?
Roller derby. My first encounter was in 2005 in Austin, Texas. I was interested in their two start-up roller derby leagues, but wasn’t able to shoot them. I lived in Portland, Oregon, so I looked online, saw Seattle had a league, and I went. I was laughing, smiling, and having fun—I wanted more of that.

How did that differ from the work you had been doing?
I’d been working for_ The Oregonian_ for seven years, and access was kinda crappy. I also had editors to please, instead of just trying to make pictures that were fun for me. I find I make better pictures when I’m happy, and weird sports always makes me happy.

How did your time at the paper prepare you for weird sports?
There was a photographer there, Bruce Ely, who started a photo column on high-school sports with a nontraditional approach. He looked for little moments that maybe weren’t involved with the actual action—flirting on the bleachers, mascots getting ready in the locker room. Working with Bruce on that column really helped. It got me thinking about what else is going on in sports that no one else is looking at.

What are the differences between shooting “normal” and “weird” sports?
The things that I’m interested in photographing have more layers, more moments, more information. A lot of traditional sports photography is high impact, long lens, plain background photos. I want quiet moments, wide angles, and lots of layers.

What do you look for?
I’m used to looking around, waiting and watching for things to happen. I’ve got a good sense of, “You know what, I’m gonna camp out here for a half hour because I think there’s gonna be a photo.” I’m not trying to cover it like the Super Bowl. I’m not trying to cover the entire event. I’m just trying to get little flavors.

How many frames do you typically capture on a shoot?
Have you heard of the decisive moment? Henri Cartier-Bresson called it “the decisive moment,” and Bruce Ely called my photo-graphy “the decisive motor drive.” I pretty much hammer-lock out on things and try to find gems in the editing process.

Where do you find these events?
Sometimes, Sports Illustrated. I also get tips from friends and strangers. I had one guy contact me and say, “I hear you’re the weird sports guy. I just created a new weird sport, it’s the musical-chairs world championships.” I’m like, “Cool, I’ll see you soon!” Then there’s [the email newsletter] Blood, Sweat & Cheers. I think we’re siblings at heart: They promote a lot of weird sports, and I try to photograph a lot of what they do.

What gear do you use?
I have a Canon EOS-1D X and EOS-1Ds Mark III. My number-one lens is my 35mm f/1.4 Canon EF, and I have a 50mm f/1.2, an 85mm f/1.8, a 24mm f/2, a 300mm f/2.8, and a 28mm f/1.8.

What is the weirdest sport you’ve ever seen?
I was waiting for that! The weirdest one that I haven’t photographed yet is Ultimate Tazer Ball—rugby with low-voltage stun guns. I hope that happens soon. The one that I’ve had the most fun at was Kaiju Big Battel, which is pro wrestling with Godzilla-like costumes and paper-mache buildings. Flaming tetherball was also pretty good.

Sol Neelman travels around the U.S. shooting “weird” sports such as ostrich racing and unicycle football, and blogs about them for wired.com. See his work at www.solneelman.com.

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